The largest renovation project ever conducted on Beijing's 30-year-old subway system will begin this year.

The project will start this year. The investment will be 4.3 billion yuan (US$518 million), of which 3.7 billion yuan (US$445 million) are for the improvement of trains and facilities, and the remainder for the construction of an Automatic Fare Collection system.

The renovations include updating and replacing tracks, trains, signals, communication systems, power suppliers and other important facilities before 2008.

Replacing the tracks and building a ticket system will begin in July this year.

Old tracks with a total length of 52.2 kilometers will be replaced by new seamless steel tracks, which will effectively reduce the noise and make for a smoother ride.

The restoration work will be done at night, between 12:30 and 4 am, when the subway system is out of service, to ensure the regular operations won't be seriously disrupted. 

According to the plan, 180 trains now running on Line 1 and the Loop Line will be replaced by new air-conditioned ones.

After that, the minimum interval between two trains will be shortened from the current 3-plus minutes to 2.5 minutes, which is the international standard.

The AFC system construction is scheduled to be finished by 2007. By then, passengers will be able to transfer between all subway lines with a single transportation pass.

At present, four rail transportation lines are in service in the capital city: Line 1, the Loop Line, the City Train and the Batong Line.

About 1.5 million passengers use the subway system every day.

(CRI.com March 18, 2005)